Acropolis in the Age of Pericles

5/25/2018 Acropolis in the Age of Pericles

1/20

THE ACROPOLIS IN THE

AGE OF PERICLES

JEFFREY M. HURWITUniversity of Oregon


2/20

PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK

40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA

477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia

Ruiz de Alarcon 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain

Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa

http://www.cambridge.org

CJeffrey M. Hurwit 2004

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,

no reproduction of any part may take place without

the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2004

Printed in the United States of America

Typeface ITC New Legacy Book 10.5/15 pt. SystemLATEX 2 [TB]

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Hurwit, Jeffrey M., 1949

The Acropolis in the age of Pericles / Jeffrey M. Hurwit.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-521-82040-5 ISBN 0-521-52740-6 (pb.)

1. Acropolis (Athens, Greece) 2. Athens (Greece) Antiquities. I. Title.

DF287.A2H86 2004

938.5 dc22 2003065452

ISBN 0 521 82040 5 hardback

ISBN 0 521 52740 6 paperback


3/20

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations pageix

Views of the Acropolis CD-ROM Images xv

Preface xxiii

Abbreviations xxv

1 The Rock and the Goddess 1

2 Landscape of Memory: The Past on the Classical Acropolis 49

3 Pericles, Athens, and the Building Program 87

4 The Parthenon 106

5 The Propylaia 155

6 The Erechtheion: The Classical Temple of Athena Polias 164

7 The Sanctuary of Athena Nike 181

8 The Rest of the Program 192

9 Conclusion: The Periclean Acropolis as a Whole 224

Appendix: Chronology 252

Glossary 257

Notes 261

Works Cited 285

Index 297

vii


4/20

CHAPTER ONE

THE ROCK AND THE GODDESS

The Rock

The Acropolis (Fig. 1; CD 001003) is not the tallest hill in Athens Mt.

Lykabettos, not quite 2 kilometers to the northeast, is nearly twice as

high but it had the right combination of accessibility, usable sum-

mit, natural defenses, and water to make it the obvious choice for an-

cient Athenss high city or city on the hill (for that is whatakropolis

means).1

Almost every Greek citystate (orpolis) had one, but no otheracropolis was as successful as the Athenian: a massive urban focus that

was always within view and that at various times throughout its virtually

uninterrupted 6,000-year-long cultural history served as dwelling place,

fortress, sanctuary, and symbol often all at once.

The Acropolis is about 270 meters (885 feet) long at its longest and

about 156 meters (512 feet) wide at its widest, but it is rugged and irregu-

larly shaped, and the builders of its later, faceted walls merely regularized

its essentially polygonal form (Fig. 2). They also created its flat-topped

appearance: the rock actually slopes markedly from a ridge at its center

down to the south (Fig. 3b), and only a long and complex series of retain-

ing walls and artificial terraces on that side, together with a huge stone

platform originally built to support a Parthenon planned decades before

Pericless great building (Fig. 4), extended the natural summit in that di-

rection. Originally, then, the Acropolis was most sheer on the north and

the east, and these sides especially are marked by virtually perpendicular

cliffs about 30 meters (100 feet) high: the fortification walls built by men

1


5/20

2 The Acropolis in the Age of Pericles

1. View of Acropolis from southwest; Mt. Lykabettos is seen in the distance, to the right

of the Parthenon. Photo: author.

almost seem to emerge from them, as if the natural form had somehow

transformed itself into architecture. But even the south side of the rock

is marked by great rocky bulges and escarpments (Fig. 1; CD 001002),

and the only easy ascent was (and is) on the west side (Fig. 5), where the

2. (facing page). Plan of the Acropolis by I. Gelbrich (after Travlos 1971, Fig. 91, and

Korres 1994b, 43), with revisions by author.

1 Propylaia 17 Klepsydra Fountain

2 Sanctuary of Athena Nike 18 Shrine of Aphrodite and Eros

3 Monument of Eumenes II (later, of Agrippa) 19 Cave of Aglauros

4 Northwest Building 20 Odeion of Pericles

5 Sanctuary of Artemis Brauronia 21 Theater of Dionysos

6 Chalkotheke 22 Temple of Dionysos

7 Bronze Athena 23 Monument of Thrasyllos

8 Building III (House of the Arrhephoroi) 24 Monument of Nikias

9 Erechtheion 25 Asklepieion

10 Pandroseion 26 Ionic Stoa

11 Opisthodomos? 27 Stoa of Eumenes II

12 Altar of Athena 28 Boundary of the Spring

13 Parthenon 29 Temples of Isis and Themis

14 Sanctuary of Zeus Polieus 30 Odeion of Herodes Atticus

15 Temple of Roma and Augustus 31 Santuary of Aphrodite Pandemos16 Building IV (Heroon of Pandion?) 32 Beule Gate


6/20

3


7/20


3. a.Section through the hills of Athens (after Judeich 1931, Fig. 7). b.Section through

Acropolis (after Higgins and Higgins 1996, Fig. 3.4). Drawings by I. Gelbrich.

Acropolis is joined by saddles to lower, smaller hills nearby (above all,

the Areopagos and the Pnyx, Fig. 6; CD 014) that would themselves

play significant roles in the political history and civic life of Athens.

The Acropolis itself is a complex, soft mass of schist, sandstone, marl,

and conglomerate capped by a thick layer of hard, highly fracturedlimestone formed in the late Cretaceous period, around the time the di-

nosaurs died off (Fig. 7; CD 010011). The stone is fundamentally bluish

to light gray in color, but it is also frequently tinged pink, and irregular

streaks of almost blood-red marl or calcite course through it (CD 012

013). The brecciated, veined character of the stone is especially clear

in those exposed portions of the rock that, over the centuries, have

been heavily polished by feet. In places, the stone is nearly crystalline

and its character thus approaches that of marble (because marble is

simply limestone that has undergone a lot of high pressure and heated


8/20

The Rock and the Goddess 5

metamorphosis, the line between them is sometimes hard to draw). At

all events, this sameAcropolis limestonecaps the other outcrops and

hills of Athens (Fig. 3a; CD 014). Eons ago, they were all part of the same

continuous physical feature, bumps on a long mountain ridge that waseventually broken down by such forces as earthquake and erosion.

In other words, the Acropolis is basically an ancient mountaintop,

a remnant of a once much greater limestone formation that, like

the other hills of Athens, came to be partly buried by the levelling

sediments that created the Athenian plain.

4. Foundations of Periclean Parthenon, originally built for Older Parthenon, 489 480.Courtesy DAIAthens (Neg. Akr. 112).


9/20

5. View of Acropolis from west. Photo: author.

DIPYLON

STOA POIKILE

BASILICA

HEPHAISTEION

HILL OF THE NYMPHS CLASSICAL

AGORA

AREOPAGOS

PNYXACROPOLIS

HILL OF THE MUSES

THEATRE OF DIONYSOS

WALLOF

THEMISTOCLES

GYMNASIUM OF HADRIAN

ILISS

OS

STOA OF

ATTALOS

PANHELLENION?

OLYMPIEION

GATE OF HADRIAN

AREA OF

ARCHAIC AGORA

ROMAN AGORA

PANTHEON?

LIBRARY OF HADRIAN

STADIUM

ELEUSINION HELLENISTIC STOAS

STREET OF THE TRIPODS

6. Map of Athens, by I. Gelbrich.

6


10/20


7. View of Acropolis limestone, south slope. Photo: author.

The rock is characterized on all sides by hollows and projections, by

deep folds and fissures, and by caves large and small. A series of caves

(once sacred to Pan, Zeus, and Apollo) marks its northwest shoulder

(Fig. 8; CD 004). A high, deep cave gouges the middle of the north side

(CD 005). A huge, rounded grotto the Cave of Aglauros, as it is known is the principal feature of the east (Fig. 9; CD 008009). On the south, an-

cient architects, having shaved smooth the bulging face of the limestone,

collaborated with the caves nature provided to create such structures as

theMonumentofThrasyllos,builttocommemoratethevictorofachoral

competition in the year 320/19 (Fig. 10). The effects of natural erosion

are everywhere palpable, and the action of earthquakes, taken together

with the seepage of water channeled through widening fractures in the

limestone in places the Acropolis has split or has been in danger of


11/20

8. Northwest slope of Acropolis. The caves marking the slope were sacred to Apollo

Pythios/Hypoakraios (Under the Long Rocks), Zeus Olympios, and Pan. Photo: author.

9. Grotto on east slope (Cave of Aglauros). Photo: author.


12/20


10. Monument of Thrasyllos (320/19), above Theater of Dionysos. Photo: author.

splitting apart have at various times sent great pieces of the rock to

the ground below. An inscription marking the extent of theperipatos, the

ancient roadway that encircles the Acropolis (Fig. 2), is carved on such a

fallen boulder, for example (Fig. 11), and in the first centuryADanotherlarge chunk smashed into the centerof the paved court of one of Classical

Athenss most splendid fountainhouses,the Klepsydra, on thenorthwest

slope (Fig. 2; no. 17). The interior mass of the Acropolis now appears to

be stable, and the citadel seems in no danger of splitting deep at its core.

The limestone that caps the Acropolis, though hard, is porous and

water-soluble; the schistsandstone foundation of the rock, though soft,

is neither. Thus, water percolates down through the limestone only to be

stopped by the impermeable layer below. It collects atop the seam and,


13/20


11. View ofperipatos (north slope). Theperipatos inscription is inscribed on the bottom of

the upright block of Acropolis limestone at left. Photo: author.

as a result, it could be tapped at relatively shallow depths on the periph-

ery of the Acropolis, where the limestone meets the schistsandstone

layer, where the forces of erosion have hollowed out caves or rock shel-

ters, and where the water naturally emerges again in springs.2 In essence,

then, the lower slopes of the Acropolis were full of natural reservoirs,

and it was this ready supply of water that early on made it an attrac-

tive site for human occupation. At the northwest corner of the rock,

shallow artesian wells tapped the supply as early as habitation can bedocumented at Athens, in the Neolithic period, and this is the area

that became the location of the Klepsydra. Midway along the north

side of the rock, Late Bronze Age (or Mycenaean) Athenians dug a well

at the bottom of a deep, hidden fissure and built a remarkable stair-

way of wood and stone to reach it.3 On the south side, natural springs

were thought sacred and played important roles in Classical cult (for

example, in the Sanctuary of Asklepios [Figs. 12, 13; CD 153, 156]).4

This, then, was the easily defensible, relatively water-rich rock that

would dominate the political, military, religious, and cultural history of


14/20


12. View of Asklepieion from east. Photo: author.

Athens the hub of what the oracle of Delphi knew asthe wheel-shaped

city.5 Historical Athenians called it the Acropolis or even just polis.6

What the prehistoric inhabitants of Athens called it (and what divinitiesthey first worshipped upon it), we do not know. There was a Classical

memory of a distant time when the Athenians themselves were known

as the Kekropidai or Kranaoi, after their prehistoric kings Kekrops and

Kranaos, though there is no memory of what they called the Acropolis

then.7 However, it is entirely plausible that they called it (and the small

clusters of houses they eventually planted atop it and its slopes) Athene

or, in the plural,Athenai, words that seem, etymologically, pre-Greek. If

that is so, the rock lent its name to the patron deity who would be soparticularly and strongly associated with it, the city goddess who was,

in effect, imminent in the rock and whose principal sacred emblems or

symbolsthe owl, the snake, and the olive treedwelled or grew upon

it. Some small trace of that primeval identity may, in fact, be preserved

in Homers Odyssey8 when Athene (an epic form of Athena) is said to

travel toAthene(the city, in the singular): the words are the same and so,

linguistically, the goddess visits herself. In short, it seems that Athena

was in the beginning named after the rock. No matter what later myths,

mythographers,andtragedianssuggest,thecitywasnotnamedafterher.


15/20


13. Plan of the Asklepieion. After Travlos 1971, Fig. 171. Reproduced by permission of

DAIZentrale, Berlin.

And yet, in the end, who was named for what did not matter much.

What mattered was the special relationship the city forged with the god-

dessandhowcompletelyAthenacametoberegardedasAthensitself.The

Athenians virtually spoke her name (AthenaorAthenaia) every time they

namedtheircity(Athenai)andthemselves(Athenaioi).9 In fact, because the

Athenianpolis eventually encompassed all of Attica (Fig. 14) and not just

the city itself, the Athenians might more accurately have called them-

selvesAttikoi(inhabitants of Attika). That they did not do so suggests

the strength of their special bond to their goddess. For although Athena

was a goddess for all Greeks, the Athenians claimed her as their own,

identifying themselves with her, and claimed for themselves many of the

very qualities Athena herself embodied: military valor, boldness, love ofthe beautiful, love of reason and moderation, and knowledge. Athena

was their guide and their security. She was the Athenian ideal and in the

Athenian mind, where religious belief and secular patriotism dwelled so

easily, so inextricably together, the goddess and the city were one.10

The Goddess

We do not know where the Greek gods came from, but the conventionalview is that most of them came from somewhere else. It is widely believed,


16/20


14. Map of Attika, by I. Gelbrich.

for example, that when the Indo-European people who would in timebecome the Greeks arrived on the mainland early in the Bronze Age,

they superimposed their own system ofsky gods (mostly male) upon a

stratum of chthonic, or earthly, powers worshipped by the peoples they

found in placeabove all, fertility and earth-mother goddesses (such as

Gaia, or Earth, herself) of Neolithic and even Palaeolithic origin, the very

embodiments of fecundity. It was indeed typical of most ancient peoples

to respect and absorb, or else co-opt, the gods of others rather than reject

them. (Why take chances, and why fight holy wars?) And so, the Greekpantheon has often been considered the result of a Bronze Age blend


17/20


of more or less indigenous nature divinities (broadly responsible for the

welfare and fertility of human beings, plants, and animals) and newly

arrived Olympians, with their own more specific functions and limited

spheres of action special department gods, as they have been called.11

Things are not likely to have been that simple. Although the distinc-

tion betweenearth godsandsky godswas taken for granted even in

antiquity,12 the notion that one set of divinities (the chthonic ones) was

native and the other set (the Olympians) consisted ofIndo-European

invaders is hard to prove. It is remarkable, for example, that only one of

the canonical twelve Olympian gods can confidently be said to have an

impeccable Indo-European pedigree, and that is Zeus, god of the shining

sky and thunderbolt. Yet, some gods outside the canon (the sun god He-lios, for example) are almost certainly Indo-European, too. On the other

hand, Demeter, the principal goddess of the cultivated earth, is also an

Olympian, whereas the canonical Aphrodite is probably a postBronze

Age eastern immigrant to Olympus from Cyprus. (She is not nicknamed

the Cyprianfor nothing.) As for Athena, who is firmly entrenched as

one of the Olympian twelve, her name at least seems to predate the arrival

of the people who would worship her.

The formation of Greek religion was clearly a long and complex pro-

cess, and the origins of individual divinities often cannot be precisely

tracked. In fact, Greek religion had already undergone many centuries of

combination, assimilation, and transformation by the time Athena (or

her prototype) first enters the archaeological record. Interestingly, she

first appears not in Athens or on its Acropolis but on the acropolis of

Mycenae, the heavily fortified citadel that was the leading cultural and

political center of Late Bronze Age Greece. She also appears in a cluster

of imagesa gold ring, a painted tablet, a fragment of fresco (Fig. 15)

that present her very much as later Greeks knew her: as an armed, hel-meted, warrior goddess.13 It is no surprise to find that the Mycenaeans

best known for their fortified citadels, weapons, and armor worshipped

a female deity charged (apparently) with the defense of the citadel and

royal house. Warrior goddesses were commonplace elsewhere in the east-

ern Mediterranean and Near East. (The Mesopotamians, for example,

had Ishtar or Astarte, the Egyptians had Neith.) There is no reason why

such a goddess should not have figured in the pantheon of Bronze Age

Greece.


18/20


a

b

15. a. Shield Goddess on painted tablet from Cult Center, Mycenae (Athens NM 2666).

Late thirteenth century. Drawing after Rehak 1984, 537. b. Helmeted Goddess holding

griffin. Drawing of fresco from Cult Center, Mycenae (Athens NM 11652). Late thirteenth

century.


19/20


Whether Mycenaean Greeks actually called their warrior goddess

Athena, we do not know. She may be mentioned once in the Bronze

Age linguistic record, but the record is controversial, and it comes from

neither Mycenae nor Athens but from Knossos on Crete. On a narrowclay tablet baked hard in the fire that destroyed the Palace of Minos

(possibly around 1375, possibly later), two inscribed lines of Linear B (a

syllabic script that is the earliest known form of written Greek) seem to

record gifts issued to four deities.14 The top line readsa-ta-na-po-ti-ni-ja,

and that, as soon as the text was deciphered, rang a loud bell. The al-

most identical phrasespotnia Athenaiaand potni Athana(both meaning

Lady Athena) are found many centuries later in Homer and, later still,

on inscriptions from the Acropolis.15

The trouble is that the titlepotnia(lady ormistress in the sense ofshe who masters) is apparently

applied to more than one deity in Linear B (including one goddess who

seemsaPotnia par excellence),16 andthatwhennamesarelinkedtoitthey

are normally toponymns, or place names. So,a-ta-na-po-ti-ni-ja means not

Lady Atana(that is, Athena) butLady of Atana,and we have no idea

whether the Atana referred to isourAthens or another one on Crete,

or whether the lady of the place is Athena herself or some other goddess

closely associated with it.

All in all, though, it is likely that the Greeks of the Mycenaean Age

worshipped a goddess like Athena a goddess of cities or citadels, at the

very least and it is a very good bet that Athena is what they called her

afterall.Althoughthegoddesswillnotappearagaininthearchaeological

record for some 500 years, that record was still Greek, and some degree

of religious and linguistic continuity across the centuries is assured. It

certainly seems more than coincidence that when an Archaic temple was

built directly atop the ruins of the Bronze Age palace of Mycenae in the

seventh century, it was (it seems) dedicated to Athena.In a sense, the Greeks did not worship one Athena; they worshipped

many.LikeanyGreekgodorgoddess,Athenawasaforceofmultiplepow-

ers, with many roles and manifestations, with the capacity to intervene

in human life in a variety of ways. The wide range of her associations with

special spheres of human activity is reflected in the dozens of epithets or

titles by which Athena was known. Athena loomed large in the lives of

Greeks other than the Athenians, of course. At Sparta, for example, she

was worshipped asChalkioikos, Athena of the Bronze House, and she is


20/20


The Statue of Athena Polias

The cult image of Athena Polias was so old

that the Athenians themselves were not sure

where it had come from, and so simple that

one later Christian author (a hostile witness,

to be sure, writing when the statue had

probably deteriorated) called ita rough

stake and a shapeless piece of wood.19

According to one tradition, it had

miraculously fallen down from heaven.

According to others, either the legendary

Kekrops or Erichthonios had it made when

he was king of the city. However it got there,it was surely among the oldest cult-statues to

be seen anywhere in Greece. Although there is

the possibility that the statue was a Bronze

Age or Mycenaean relica prehistoric fetish

that somehow survived the centuriesand

whereas we can be confident that throughout

its long history, it always inhabited a series of

shrines built on the north side of the

Acropolis, culminating in the late

fifth-century building we call the

Erechtheion but whose official title wasthe

temple on the Acropolis in which the ancient

image is(Figs. 1617), we know, strangely,

very little about it. We think it was life-size or

less because we can infer from a variety of

evidence that it was evacuated from the

Acropolis in 480 just before the Persians

came, and that women could dress it, undress

it, and possibly even carry it around like a

mannequin as part of various festival rituals.

Several inscriptions inventory an impressivearray of ornaments somehow attached to the

statue a diadem [or crown] which the

goddess wears, the earrings which the

goddess wears, a band which the goddess

wears on her neck, five necklaces, a gold owl, a

goldaigis, a gold gorgoneion, and a goldphiale

[a shallow libation bowl] which she holds in

her hand.20 But, we are not sure when or

over how long a period she acquired the

items, and she may also have worn a bronze

helmet that (because of its relatively poorer

material) did not make it into the inventories.

We do not even know for sure whether the

statue was seated or standing. There are a

number of small painted terracotta seated

goddesses from the Acropolis that might

crudely imitate the Athena Polias (cf. Fig. 18),

but there are standing terracottas that might

imitate her, too, and it is likely that the

ancient statue stood postlike, rigidly upright,

with a goldphialein one hand and an owl in

the other.21 Indeed, it is just possible that it

or something like itwas represented insouth metope 21 of the Parthenon (Fig. 19).22

It is certain, however, that the statue wore

cloth as well as gold. Every year, the statue

was dressed in a new saffron-colored woolen

robe orpeplos(measuring perhaps 5 by 6 feet)

woven by select Athenian girls and women

and principally decorated (in contrasting

purple) with inwoven scenes from the battle

between the gods and giants, the savage sons

of Earth (Gaia) who tried to overthrow the

Olympians. (There are a few hints that other

subjects, such as chariots and Athenian sol-

diers, appeared as well.) No detailed represen-

tation of thepeplossurvives (though the cloth

depicted in the center of the Parthenons east

frieze is probably it; Fig. 20; CD 092), but it

must have been an especially grand version of

the sort of richly figured garments worn by

women in many vase-paintings, by Athena

herself in a late statue in Dresden, and (their

paint now mostly faded) by Archaic Acropoliskorai(cf. Fig. 45).23 At all events, the

presentation of a newpeplosto Athena Polias

was the highlight of the grand midsummer

civic festival known as the Panathenaia.

The fate of the statue is unknown, but it is

likely to have finally crumbled or been

destroyed by the early fifth centuryAD, after

servingasthefocusofthemostimportantcult

ontheAcropolisforathousandyearsormore.

Acropolis in the Age of Pericles

Documents

Transcript of Acropolis in the Age of Pericles